Daniel Ricciardo reckons Red Bull made a “pretty obvious mistake” with the timing of his final run during qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Ricciardo explained that rear tyre issues during the first two segments of qualifying meant he would only carry out one warm-up lap in Q3, though needed to push hard during the lap.
However, he felt that Red Bull mis-timed his run, as he finished over half a second adrift of team-mate Max Verstappen en route to fifth spot.
“We came out in traffic basically, so we didn’t push on the last run on the out lap,” he commented.
“It seemed like we had 20s to [Sergio] Pérez behind so I don’t know why we didn’t go in that gap.
“They put me out just behind Max, who was on a build lap, so he wasn’t even going that quick, and then we caught Jenson [Button] as well.
“But there were 20 seconds behind me, why we went out in traffic when we know we needed a hard out lap, that was a pretty obvious mistake.”
Ricciardo feels the error denied him a shot at contending for the leading positions.
“I think we could have challenged everyone but it means nothing saying it now as we’re not there, but we were very far from the potential, so that’s the frustrating part,” he said.
Discussion about this post